Threatened Vietnam cave bugs draw little sympathy

CORRECTS SPELLING OF TOWN AND QUARRY INFORMATION - In this photo taken July 2, 2012, raw rocks are loaded onto a truck for the processing at a limestone quarry owned by a Vietnamese company in Hon Chong, Vietnam. Hundreds of species live in the limestone caves of Hon Chong in southern Vietnam, and many of them are found nowhere else on Earth. Yet their habitat is being blown apart, chunk by chunk, in the name of making cement. Holcim Vietnam - a joint venture of the Switzerland-based company Holcim and a state-owned Vietnamese construction company - began quarrying 200 hectares of Hon Chong limestone in 1997. (AP Photo/Na Son Nguyen)
— AP

CORRECTS SPELLING OF TOWN AND QUARRY INFORMATION - In this photo taken July 2, 2012, raw rocks are loaded onto a truck for the processing at a limestone quarry owned by a Vietnamese company in Hon Chong, Vietnam. Hundreds of species live in the limestone caves of Hon Chong in southern Vietnam, and many of them are found nowhere else on Earth. Yet their habitat is being blown apart, chunk by chunk, in the name of making cement. Holcim Vietnam - a joint venture of the Switzerland-based company Holcim and a state-owned Vietnamese construction company - began quarrying 200 hectares of Hon Chong limestone in 1997. (AP Photo/Na Son Nguyen)
/ AP

Holcim is also working with the International Union for Conservation of Nature to develop a "biodiversity action plan" for Hon Chong that is expected to be finalized in October. Jake Brunner, Mekong program coordinator for the conservation group, said Holcim does not have a perfect environmental record but is an "island of excellence" when compared to Vietnam's state-owned cement companies.

Holcim's critics, however, said that while the company is helping to mitigate the damage done to monkeys and cranes, it is slowly killing off the small cave dwellers that play an undervalued but important role in the ecosystem.

Cave invertebrates are pollinators and the base of food chains that support a rich web of life, scientists say. Because limestone hills have rugged terrain and have largely been spared from agricultural development, their interior caves are now "islands" of tropical biodiversity, and most of the organisms living inside those caves are unknown to science.

Ng, the Singapore biologist, said the destruction continues in part because caves do not house "sexy" animals that galvanize the general public's sympathies.

"That's the reality where we are living," he said in an interview at company headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City.

Holcim declined a request by the AP to visit its Hong Chong quarries and cement production plant, saying it did not have enough advance notice to arrange a tour. But in July, AP reporters interviewed local residents who said they were grateful for the jobs, infrastructure and social welfare programs the company assists in.

"Holcim has done a good job protecting the environment," said provincial environmental official Vo Thi Van. "It's not right to say the quarries have caused an ecological disaster."

Holcim's plant was built with help from the International Finance Corporation, the private-sector arm of the World Bank. It arranged financing of $97 million for the project, though Deharveng warned the corporation in 1995 that "no comparable ecosystem exists elsewhere in Vietnam."

The decision to go through with the loan was made based on an environmental impact assessment by Vietnamese scientists that did not specifically address threats to Hon Chong's cave biodiversity, said Richard Caines, one of the finance corporation's principal environment specialists.

The corporation later commissioned a biodiversity survey that in 2002 reported "wide species diversity" in Hon Chong's limestone hills. The loan was paid off in 2003, but Caines said the corporation continued to work with Holcim Vietnam after that, in part because the quarrying operations posed a "reputation risk" to both parties.